Tropic of Cancer (Miller, 1934)

The experience one gets when reading Miller’s far from lapidary prose is akin to the vivifying abandon of driving at top speed on an unpaved road with no destination. If this seems at odds with the callous disregard Miller has for the filth that is, in his view, the world, it absolutely is. The genius of Miller is that of life itself; willingly acquiescing to the veritable shit that have become our environs and living symbiotically with them as if it were god-sent. “I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive.”

Principles that make for a good story

1. Absence of lengthy verbiage of a political-social-economic nature

2. Total Objectivity

3. Truthful descriptions of persons and objects

4. Extreme brevity

5. Audacity and originality: flee the stereotype

6. Compassion

Dutifully transcribed by yours truly from the Pevear/Volokhonsky…

The Huntsman (Chekhov, 1885)

A sultry and stifling day. Not a cloud in the sky…The sun-scorched grass looks bleak, hopeless: there may be rain, but it will never be green again…The forest stands silent, motionless, as if its treetops were looking off somewhere or waiting for something.

A tall, narrow-shouldered man of about forty, in a red shirt, patched gentleman’s trousers, and big books, lazily saunters along the edge of the clearing. He saunters down the road. To his right are green trees, to his left, all the way to the horizon, stretches a golden sea of ripe rye…His face is red and sweaty. A white cap with a straight jockey’s visor, apparently the gift of some generous squire, sits dashingly on his handsome blond head. Over his shoulder hangs a game back with crumpled black grouse in it. The man is carrying a cocked double-barreled shotgun and squinting his eyes at his old, skinny dog, who runs ahead, sniffing about in the bushes. It is quiet, not a sound anywhere…Everything alive is hiding from the heat.

The Best Tales of Hoffman (Hoffman, 1810’s)

The Best Tales of Hoffmann is a mixed lot in terms of both content and quality. Hoffman is at his best, I feel, when his prose is almost seamlessly in cohort with the fantastic. He comes closest to this in “The Golden Flower Pot”, “Nutcracker and the King of Mice” and, at his darkest, in the truly strange “The Sand Man.” His stories fall their flattest when he is unable to reconcile his concept of the fantastic with that of reality. Rath Krespel, Automata and The Mines of Falun are prime examples of this.

Moscow to the End of the Line (Erofeev, 1969)

Moscow to the End of the Line is a harrowing look at the link between addiction and madness with a sense of desperation akin to that of Hamson’s Hunger or, indeed, Dostoevsky’s Notes From Under the Carpet (as my Russian speaking professor use to insist was the actual title). The physical and mental slavery of addiction, in this case to spirits, is presented to the reader in ways that are both humorous (with a heavy dosage of the pitch-black) and horrifying.

The Life and Extraordinary Adventure of Private Ivan Chonkin (Voinovich, 1969)

There is, for me, something about Russian literature that is culturally insular in all the right ways. One almost always feels that their authors are deeply in touch with not only their country, but its artistic heritage as well. This, naturally, often comes at the expense of Russia itself. Such is the case with The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin, a soviet era novel brazen enough to mock all the cornerstones of political hierarchy.

The Fur Hat (Voinovich, 1989)

Vladimir Voinovich’s The Fur Hat is a charmingly hilarious satire that spares none of its characters, save perhaps the narrator, the indignation they all deserve. Voinovich, banished from Russian in 1980 for “defaming the motherland,” writes prose that is crisp, modern and frequently laugh out loud (or chuckle quietly) funny. The premise of the book is an absurd one. One of Russia’s authors, Yefim Rakhlin, a terrible writer and a Jew who only writes about “decent men,” is given a hat made of tomcat by The Writers Union. The trouble is, Yefim and his inflated ego feel that he at least deserves a hat made of rabbit (as some other writers were given). His quest for the hat drives him to madness and culminates in and act of comical violence Mike Tyson would be proud of.

Scenes From the Bathhouse: and other stories of Communist Russia (Zoshchenko, 1917-1945)

Zoshchenko comes across as an ordinary, intelligent and above all humorous documentarian of the state of Russia during trying times. His prose is a marked departure from the excess and fantastical visions of authors such as Bely and Gogol. Here one’s senses are not under the constant deluge of delirium and stimuli that adumbrates, say, Petersburg. Zoschenko eschews this approach in favor of a down to earth and sincerely sad snap shots of urban life where families occupy bathrooms and priests, who themsevles aren’t sure of their faith, listen to the confessions of others. In spite of their melancholy leitmotif when read in succession, all of Zoshchenkos stories are very humorous.

We (Zamyatin, 1920)

The second book in a row that I have read where parallelepipeds were mentioned, We by Yevgeny Zamyatin is a strong testament and pillar (perhaps the first that was installed) of the dystopian genre. Dashed out in broad strokes (“every word must be supercharged, high voltage”), We is the tale of a man and society composed entirely of numbers and willing servitude. Happiness, in the One True State, is precisely linked to the lack of free will. You know where this is going by now, I suppose.

Petersburg (Bely, 1916)

Petersburg is an astonishing composition that blends much of what many love about 19th century Russian Lit with a daunting symbolist aesthetic that practically swallows its strands of plot into a prenatal existence. Sure, there is a narrative – a bomb, politics, parricide – but the crux of Petersburg is the dazzling imagery and false signifiers that Bely relentlessly cascades from every page.

Nobody Move (Johnson, 2009)

I guess when you win the National Book award you can afford to write a breezy 200 page noir novel for the likes of Playboy. Serialized, released in four sections and, finally, here in novel form, this is precisely what the doctor ordered for Kevin after his bout with 2666. The mere fact that this book exists seems strange at first, although you quickly gather that Johnson is not straying terribly far from the grimy, distinctly American, characters and roots that have always served as the foundation of his fiction.